Palestine at the UN Rights Council: Hope and Hypocrisy
A Step on preventing impunity for war crimes committed in Gaza;
United States continues its constant support to Israel
On Thursday March 25th, as a follow up to the Goldstone report, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) established an expert committee to monitor national investigations into war crimes in Israel and the Gaza Strip. The Goldstone report, endorsed by the UN six months ago, required Israel and Hamas to conduct credible investigations into possible war crimes committed by their own forces during the January 2009 invasion of Gaza by Israel, or face potential referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court. The expert committee is required to report back to the Human Rights Council in September of this year with its findings.
The United States and several European countries, including Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia and Ukraine, voted against the resolution which established the expert committee. According to Moataz El Fegiery, Executive Director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), “Once more the US and several EU states have attempted to provide impunity for Israeli war crimes in complete disregard of international human rights standards, and in contradiction with their calls to end impunity in other situations.”
The previous day, 24 March, two other resolutions were voted on, one in support of the Palestinian’s Right to Self Determination and another that expressed grave concern over Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) and Syrian Golan. The United States alone voted against both resolutions, while all other governments voted yes.
“The US’s unilateral opposition to upholding Palestinians’ right to self-determination is not just ethically wrong,” said Jeremie Smith, Director of the Geneva Office of CIHRS, “but also undermines the ability of the US to have any positive impact on the Human Rights Council and to effectively mediate the Middle East peace process.”
The Secretary-General is due to report to the General Assembly at the end of July on the implementation of the Goldstone report, after which his reporting duties on this issue will expire. In an intervention before the Human Rights Council on the 22 March, CIHRS urged member states of the Human Rights Council “to work within the General Assembly to either extend the SG’s monitoring and reporting duties or to request that any expert committee established by the Council to report directly to the General Assembly until such time as a determination on the sufficiency of national investigations has been made.”
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